Nosema ceranae and apis look different under the scope, but only if you've
looked at a lot of nosema.

When Juanse and I visited West Australia a few years ago, the spores looked
like N apis, not ceranae.  Ditto for the sample that Ruary sent me from
Ireland.  Ditto when I looked at samples from Canada some years ago.Ditto
for a sample that I saw in Oregon a couple of years ago in a demonstration
set up at a conference.  When I pointed out that it looked like apis, and
asked where the sample came from, they said that they had taken it from an
sample of bees that had been stored for several years.

It appeared to me, based solely upon visual identification, that N ceranae
was still in the invasion stage in all of those areas at that time.

Confounding identification is that some of the original primers used to
differentiate the species appear to have led to many misidentifications
(and still may, unless newer primers are used).

The most telling (but clearly indirect) way to track the invasion in the
U.S. is likely by the data of nosema prevalence from the Beltsville Bee
Disease Diagnostic Lab.  See my graph at
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-17a-nosema-the-smoldering-epidemic/


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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